Hints for Lovers · Chapter 3Plea: Confession and Avoidance (3)
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
* * *
When love is dead, it is perhaps best soonest buried.
* * *
In astronomy, to determine the motions of three bodies mutually attractive is admittedly difficult. It is easy compared with the same problem in love.
* * *
A man's work and a woman's love, though to each the sum-total of life, are often things wholly and totally dissociated.
Man, the egoist, thinks that if the woman loves him, by consequence she will love his work. It may be, but usually, non sequitur; for
Few are the women who can understand a man's work:
For thousands of years man has worked in the hunting-field, in the market-place in the camp; for an equal length of time woman has worked by the cradle, by the hearth. Accordingly,
Man has two sides to his nature, woman but one:
Man wears one aspect when facing the world; he wears quite another aspect when facing women;
At their work, men are rigid, frigid, austere, sever, peremptory, tyrannical, downright;
With women, . . . . . .Humph!—Wherefore,
O strenuous and high-aspiring man, in thy work, seek not from woman's love what woman's love cannot give; but set thy face 90 as a flint. Bethink thee of the fate of Anthony. For
Man's chief business in the world is: Work.
Woman's chief business in the world is; Love.
Man's love (perhaps just because it is his play-thing, not his business) is more finely tempered than is woman's, and takes on a finer edge. For this very reason it is the more easily turned, and is the less useful. —It is the pocket-knife, not the lancet, that is oftener called into requisition. Also,
Man's love is usually a highly ephemeral affair.
With a man, love is like hunger or thirst: he makes a great fuss over it; he forgets when it is appeased. Yet
When "passion's trance" is overpast, it is fortunate if affection takes its place. So too,
In love it is the man who protests; and
That man is fortunate, who, after marriage, has not some dubious reflections as to whether he has protested over-much. For
In love, it is the man, generally, who makes a fool of himself.
* * *
Love (like murder) will out. But
Jill keeps her secret better than Jack. For
A woman generally controls love: a man is controlled by it. And Jill's very power of making-believe to be "fancy free" exasperates Jack.
* * *
It is a purely feminine ruse to apply a test to love—both her own and that of her lover—to prove it true. A man would as soon as think of applying a match to a powder magazine to prove it combustible.
Love in woman's eyes is the supreme and ultimate arbitrator. If she is loved, love in her eyes will condone anything—anything. For
To prefer honor to love is a maxim to women unknown. With them love IS honor. And therefore the maxim is meaningless—and needless.
* * *
It is a sort of legal—or rather charitable—fiction that women should surrender only to love. In fact,
Do not even the lightest of Laises and Thaises make a show of being swayed by love? And
No woman by too much love was ever spoiled. Man, remember that!
* * *
The logic of the emotions differs from the logic of the intellect. As to the senses—
Alack-a-day! The senses never reason.
Love sometimes wrecks its barque upon the rocks to prove that they harbor no mirage.
Love sometimes forgets that it is possible to probe too far.
Love, in pursuit of love, sometimes vivisects as unconsciously as a science in pursuit of life.
* * *
Women detect the dawn of love while it is still midnight with a man. That is to say,
A woman knows a man is in love with her long before he is aware of it himself. Except perhaps in this once circumstance: when she herself is in love with somebody else. And this is a highly important circumstance.
* * *
Wholly to satisfy masculine infatuation is given to no woman. And perhaps
Wholly to satisfy feminine caprice is given to no man. So, sometimes,
The last refuge of an unrequited love is the belief that love will create love. Nothing can be more futile than such a faith. Yet
Love without hope, has its mitigations; but
How alleviate the pain of a love that mistook a simulated love for a true one?
A simulated love is a contradiction in terms.
Either one loves or one does not, that is the conclusion of the whole matter.
* * *
Love would rather suffer than forget.
Love would give the world to be able to exculpate a languid lover.
A passionate love is perhaps always poignant.
Love disdains pity.
A wounded love carries a scar to the grave.
* * *
In love, when honor is lost, loss of shame soon follows. Then indeed the downward patch becomes precipitous.
* * *
To some, love never comes; to some, it comes too often; but the same love never recurs, as never a bud opens twice: happy he or she is who gains bud, blossom, and fruit. Since
The sweetest love is that wherein the odorous flower of passion ripens into the nourishing fruitage of affection. But
Love requires careful nature. And
The more exotic the love, the more difficult its culture.—True, An orchid may life on air. Yes; but how torrid and vaporous an air!
Your sturdy mistletoe thrives on the humble apple; a Cattleya requires a Columbian forest.
* * *
Youth wonders at the amatory successes of middle-age. Youth knows not that
In matters amatory, age is no handicap:
A girl in her 'teens will make love to a gentleman of forty—and vice versa. In fact
The indiscreet impetuosity of youth succumbs before the astuteness of age.
The bachelor and the spinster both sometimes wonder that the benedick and the bride are still their rivals; for they know not that
In the amatorial art, matrimony is no handicap. In short,
There is no barrier at which love will balk. Nay more,
Love will forgive anything:
Did love demand it, love, though it might blush, would not blench. And
Often love itself stands amazed at its own divine audacity. Indeed,
Love loves to immolate itself for love. Knowing that
To love, nothing is common or unclean: for
Love, like charity, thinketh no evil. But—remember that
It is only the Uranian Aphrodite (5) that dares essay a divine audacity. Nevertheless,
Love is the most vulnerable of the emotions, and
A love doubtful of itself would be cautiously accepted: it is not a fact that
To try to feel one's own pulse, is to make the heart beat irregularly? So,
To try to see in a mirror the love light in one's own eyes, is to be-dim it. So, too,
If passion is not linked with affection—woe worth the day when the troth was plighted! But given passion linked with affection—ah!
Nothing, nothing is criminal to love; for love knows not conscience. Or rather,
Love upsets all conventional conditions. For
Love creates a world of its own, a world populated by two—and these make their own laws—or make none. So
A woman will imbrue her hands with blood, and a man will fling honor to the winds, and yet the twain regard each other as impeccant and impeccable.—Till Pippa passes; then,
Love always awakes to the fact that not even a community of two can live without law; and that
Though human laws may be outraged, those divine may not. And assuredly,
The ideal love is the divine love. And, in ideal love,
Strange, strange, but true, in a great and ardent love, when at last that is offered which was long sought, there supervenes upon the lovers a great tenderness, which hesitates to make their own that for which they yearned. Almost it were as if
A psychic monitor warned the conqueror to be clement, and the captive to be kind. This
Tenderness is the worship of the soul by the soul. And
Of all tests of love tenderness is the truest. But indeed, indeed
In love there are heights above heights, depths beneath depths: who shall scale them, who shall plumb?
(5) See Plato, "Symposium", 180 et seq.
* * *
V. On Lovers
"Si vis amari ama." —Seneca
Lovers think the world was made for them.—And so perhaps it was.
* * *
To each other, lovers are the most interesting personages alive; but onlookers regard them partly with amusement, partly with pity, partly with compassion—in the etymological sense of that word.
* * *
The first wonder of every accepted lover is that he should be the accepted lover of such a woman. —What the woman thinks . . . what the woman thinks, probably not even she herself knows. Probably each woman thinks her own thoughts.
To doubt whether one is in love is to prove oneself out of it.
* * *
To impress upon the lover the still-existing necessity of refining gold or painting the lily is out of the question. Yet every woman attempts it.
* * *
If there is one proverb more distasteful than another to a hot-headed lover, it is that half a loaf is better than no bread.
* * *
Children, dogs, and old people are difficult to deceive. Lovers who have to use circumspection should remember this.
* * *
A doubting lover should mark how, and for whom, his woman dresses.
* * *
To die for a woman would perhaps, to a young and ardent lover, not be difficult; to wage incessant warfare with the world for her, that perhaps is not so easy. But it is the better test of love; and perhaps also the better preserver and replenisher of love. For
Little as people seem to be aware of it, love requires constant replenishing: no flame can burn without a feeding oil, no pool overflow with out a purling brook. Yet
The first ecstasies of love often blind both lover and lass to the care necessary for the nurture of love. Indeed,
To many treat love as if it were a passing whim; whereas in sober reality it is (or should be) a lasting emotion.
* * *
Love, with woman, is like the tides. And
Few women know the high-water mark of their love: they are always harboring the belief that it may rise still higher; and often they await that rise.
* * *
It is but the reflection of himself in his mistress that many a foolish lover loves.
* * *
That aged spinster is a rare one who does not regret she did not accept one of her lovers. But
That younger spinster is not to be envied who has to make choice of several.
Youth glories in the multiplicity of its lovers; age sometimes wishes it had had but one.
* * *
The unloved think lad the one thing needful. The beloved know that an ocean of love could be swallowed up and the parched soul cry out athirst.
* * *
It is not well either to confide or confess too much.
A very small rock will wreck a very big ship, and a very small slip will spoil a very long life.
* * *
The pain which lovers cause each other—through fickleness, languidness, jealousy, and the thousand natural shocks that love is heir to—is not altogether pain, though at the moment it may seem the most poignant anguish the human soul could suffer. One proof of this lies in the fact that
There are few who would choose to have missed love's pangs altogether.
Perhaps the pleasure intermixed with love's pangs arises from the thought that the other is the cause of our suffering. For,
In all love, it is the sacrifice of oneself for the other that brings keenest joy. And yet
There is an element of self-love in the very extremest of love. Since
Love, after all, is a debtor and creditor affair. (Who ever loved with no hope of return?) It is when one of the parties declares him-or her-self insolvent that the account is closed—with many tears and sighs on the part of the chief creditor. At all events
The intenser the love, the more flawless does its object appear. For
The surest test of the sincerity of love is that it thinketh no evil.
The surest test of a waning love is that it begins not to content itself when it sees its object suffer.
The surest test of a dead love is that it forgets how to be jealous.
* * *
The falling-out of lovers true is a renewing may be of love. (1) Still it is not to be recommended. In fact, it might be said that
Every falling-out of lovers true is a nail in love's coffin. Yet,
A blessing it is that in love we remember the sweet rather than the bitter. For
Love was ever bitter-sweet (2).
(1) "Amanitum irae amoris integratis est." —Terrence, Andria, III, 23.
(2) But I supposed innumerable people have said this before. No matter.
* * *
The heart of a lover is like that bottom of a well: all the beauties of the starry heavens are revealed in it; but when it sheds the light of its countenance upon it, all else is obliterated.
* * *
Was any lover ever loved enough? Or
Did any ever hear of a tired lover? Nevertheless often
"Drink to me only with thine eyes", says the youthful lover; but when the seance is over he goes out and orders beef-steak and bottled beer.
* * *
What it really craves, the lover's heart is impotent to express. Yet, it is ever attempting.
A lover is full of wishes as an egg is full of meat. But
What it really wishes no lover seems able to say. As a matter of fact,
The endless task which the lover is ever attempting is a search for a formula for the summation of an infinite series of which love is the variable.—Few lovers seem to understand this.
* * *
To kindle aspiration in her lover, a woman herself need not be aspiring. For,
Whatever the talents of a man, they are stimulated by contact with woman. Since
An elevating influence seems to radiate from women: we have but to come into the light of their countenances for our own faces to shine as the sun. Indeed,
Physicists may talk as they like, but lovers know a more subtle and a more potent force than any yet revealed to them. It has not yet been named; but for the present it might be called "psychicity". (3)
(3) Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of "celebricity". See "Over the Tea Cup"
* * *
If you wish to ascertain the relationship of a youthful pair, watch their eyes. For
Simulation is difficult to the eye.
* * *
When the idol into which a woman has converted her lover is dethroned, she still worships her remembrance of her god, and puts together and treasures the broken pieces.
When the idol into which has converted his loved one is dethroned, he generally changes his creed.
* * *
A circumpsecting lover is a woman's abhorrence: as a calculating mistress is a man's.
* * *
Let a lover but put himself into the hands of his mistress, and he is safe. Since
The man she really loves, a woman will shield through thick and thin, through right and wrong. For,
Concerning a man, the only question a woman asks is, not, "Is he right or wrong?" but, "Is he mine or another's?"—We men therefore
Leave a woman to get her lover out of a scrape.
* * *
It is to be feared that the men and women who love but once and forever are not usually to be found outside of romances.
With women, love is a river, ever-flowing, from the brook in girlhood, (4) to the estuary of womanhood. Like a river, too,
Woman's love is fed by all the streams it meets. On the other hand,
With man, love is a geyser.
(4) Standing with reluctant feet Where the brook and river meet. —Longfellow, "Maidenhood"
* * *
The languishing lover has gone out of date; he has been replaced by the diverting one. And the change is significant of much: The early nineteenth-century maid pretended to ignorance; the early twentieth-century maid to omniscience.
The early nineteenth-century suitor protested; but
The early twentieth-century suitor has to contest. In the one case,
The woman tacitly acknowledges an inequality. In the other case,
The man has to openly to recognize his equal. Nevertheless,
The fundamental relationship between the sexes do not materially vary from century to century, much as conventional manners and customs may. For, after all,
Always what a man seeks in a woman is: love. And
In all love there is something perfectly and Paradisiacally pristine.
Would the most emancipated woman have love otherwise? At all events,
Perhaps the most womanly position a woman can occupy is: with her head on her lover's heart. At this the strong-minded may scoff. They may. * * *
The obsession of the male heart by one woman ousts from it all other women. Thus,
The accepted young man regards all women but the one as he would regard fashion-plates. To the young woman men continue to be men. That is to say,
A man dives headlong into love. A woman paddles into it. And the woman's hesitation at the brink of the stream exasperates the spluttering man. In short,
A man's heart is captured wholly and at a stroke. A woman's heart surrenders itself piecemeal.
Whereas, with a man, a trivial passion is usually an affair more of the senses or of the imagination than of the heart; with a woman every passions is an affair of the heart.
A man, when first he is in love, is absorbed in the contemplation of the object of his love. A woman is similarly situated is capable of making comparisons.
It gives to woman's curiosity a curious pleasure to compare the methods of men's proposals.
In love, a woman is generally cool enough to calculate pros and cons; a man, in similar plight, is incapable of anything but folly.
* * *
It is a feminine motto that a woman needs to be taught how to love. Perhaps she does; but most men will think one private tutor ought to suffice, and that tutor ought to be he. At all events,
The last schoolmaster would be apt to regard with somewhat mixed feelings the tuition of previous crammers.
Why go to the trouble of explaining away a first love, if the second is no whit its inferior? Unless it be to overcome.
What a second love chiefly deplores is: that it was not he (or she) who first taught his (or her) loved one to love. Is it not true also that
It is the first love that amazes, that beautifies, that consecrates?
(An illicit love beautifies and consecrates nothing:
A Maud leaves the daisies rosy; not so Faustine.)
Many a woman has given her heart to one lover and herself to another. The first is always won; the second is sometimes extorted. Yet,
It is wonderful how a woman will contrive to make all her lovers believe they are winners.
* * *
It often gives a lady a pleasure to give her lover a pang.
* * *
Not many but have tasted the bitterness of the conflict between the desire of the flesh and the resentment of the spirit. Explain these terms who may.
* * *
To attempt by erring to cure an erring lover, is to administer, not an antidote, but an adjuvant. It works poison in the blood. When (and if) in a tortuous love, a man arrives at a 'Don't give a damn' stage, he is not to be classed with the animals known as docile. And as to a woman. . . . . . . but polite language has its limits.
* * *
Many a man has be exasperated, not only by the audacity of his rival, but by the equanimity with which his lady-love views that audacity. He forgets that, as a rule,
Feminine complaisance varies directly as masculine audacity. And yet, often enough, as a simple matter of fact, 118 Masculine diffidence is vastly more potent than masculine audacity. And further,
Rarely need the complaisance that audacity evokes perturb the diffident man; since
Rarely need the complaisance that audacity evokes perturb the diffident man; since
The true woman may give her fingertips to the gallant; she gives herself to the worshiper. The pity o' it is that
The worshiper cannot away with the complaisance that permits a woman to give even her finger-tips to the gallant. And
Few are the women who have plumbed the silent and sensitive depths of the diffidence of her devotee. The worst of it is,
The devotee essays two things: he would apotheosize the object of his adoration and place her as a constellation among the stars; yet he would have her at the same time terrestrial and tangible. When the woman shows herself terrestrial and tangible to others than he, the faith of the devotee is shaken. In fine,
Every lover attempts that impossible task: the realization of the heavenly ideal. Perhaps
It is in aphelion that the corona appears most splendid;
Were perihelion to result is coalescence, perhaps the photosphere would be proved composed of terrestrial vapors. And if it did (as no doubt it would), would it be at all bedimmed? For, to the devout astrologer
Nothing, nothing will ever destroy beauty—and therefore wonder. So,
Bodily beauty, where Love is priestess, is a daedal spur to the loftiest worship.
The lover is ever worshipful. And
Where is worship, nothing can be profane. So
In love there is nor taint nor stain. Therefore,
Make, O youthful lover, the best and most of youth and love: never will either recur.
* * *
VI. On Making Love
"Mille modi Veneris" —Ovid
There are as many ways of making love as there are of making soup. And probably
There are as many kinds of love as there are of flavors. And
Palates—both sentimental and physical—evidently differ widely. And yet,
If you would know the secret of success with women, it is said in a word: Ardor. And
Would ye, O women, know in a word the secret of success with men? It lies in: Responsiveness.
* * *
In matters amatory—or rather pre-amatory—feminine tactics are infallible and consummate:
Let no man think to cope with feminine strategy.
* * *
A rake has more chance than a ninny.—Which doubtless has been said before.
* * *
In love, as in all things, indecision spells ruination. For
There is a curious antagonism between the sexes. They are in a manner foes, not friends. The successful wooer is the captor, the raptor; the bride is the capture, the rapture. (1) And
Even she who is minded to be caught will not spare her huntsman the ardor of the chase, and lightly esteems him who imagines she is to be lightly won.
In the chess-like game of love-making, no woman plays for check-mate: the game interests her too much to bring it to a finish. What pleases her most is stale-mate, where, though the King cannot be captured, the captress can maneuver without end.
A man imagines he wins by strenuous assault. The woman knows the victory was due to surrender.
(1) Etymologically as well as metaphorically—and veritably.
* * *
Wouldst thou ask ought of a woman? Question her eyes: they are vastly more voluble than her tongue. Indeed,
There is no question too subtle, too delicate, too recondite, or too rash, for human eyes to ask or answer. And
He who has not learned the language of the eyes, has yet to learn the alphabet of love. Besides,
Love speaks two languages: one with the lips; the other with the eyes. (There is really a third; but this is Pentecostal.) At all events,
Lovers always talk in a cryptic tongue.
There is but one universal language: the ocular—not Volapuk nor Esperanto is as intelligible or as efficacious as this.
* * *
No woman can be coerced into love,—though she may be coerced into marriage. And
Man, the clumsy wielder of one blunt weapon, often enough stands agape at his own powerlessness before the invulnerable woman of his desire. Indeed,
The battle between the coquettish maid and determined man is like the battle between the Retiarius and the Mirmillio. The coquetry ensnares the man as with a net against which his sword is useless.
* * *
A woman's emotions are as practical as a man's reason.
A man's emotions are never practical. This is why,
In the emotional matter of love, men and women so often lash. And perhaps
It is a beneficial thing for the race that a woman's emotions are practical. For
If neither the man nor the woman curbed the mettlesome Pegasus "Emotion", methinks the colts and fillies would want for hay and oats. * * *
It is a moot question which is the more fatally fascinating: the uniformed nurse or the weeded widow. But
Who has yet discovered the secret springs of fascination? For example,
How is it that certain eyes and lips will enthrall, while others leave us cold and inert?
Does the potency lie in the eyes and the lips, or is there some inscrutable and psychic power? At all events, who will explain how it is that
A man will sometimes forsake the most beautiful of wives and a woman will forsake the kindest of husbands to follow recklessly one who admits no comparison with the one forsaken? All we can say is that
The potency of personality exceeds the potency of beauty. For, Powerful as is physical charm, it counts not for all in the matter of love. Yet what it may be that does count, and how and why it does count, no man living shall say. For
Is even love aware of all its seeks? And
Is it given to any to grant all that love beseeches? And yet
Were all love sought bestowed, what sequel?
Perhaps 't were well to leave love but semi-satisfied. At bottom the real question is this: What will win and keep me another heart? But
How to win and keep another heart, that is a thing has to be found out for oneself—if it be discoverable. And always by the experimental method. Since
In matters amatory, there is no a priori reasoning possible. All we know is that
There is nothing more potent than passion. And
The chasm, which seems to innocence to yawn between virtue and frailty, is leapt by that Pegasus, Passion, at a bound—but he blinds his rider in the feat.
* * *
In spite of the poesy of love, deeds are more potent than words; —though perhaps it is well to pave the way for the one by the other.
In spite, too of the piety of love, love laughs at promises—that is, the promises that affect it.
* * *
There is one miracle that women can always perform, and always it astonishes the man; it is this: to change from the recipient into the appellant. That is to say,
When woman, usually regarded as the receiver, becomes the giver,—or rather the demander,—man's wonderment surpasses words. And let it be remembered that
There is no re-crossing this Rubicon.
* * *
Mistrust a prolonged and obdurate resistance. Either you are out-classed, or you are out-experienced. And, besides,
Surrender after prolonged resistance rarely is brought about by emotion.
* * *
A woman never really quite detests daring. This is why Much is a forgiving a daring man. So, too,
Much is forgiven a pretty woman by the men.
* * *
If the beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water, the beginning of love is as when one kindleth a fire.
* * *
The eye tells more than the tongue. And
If the eye and the tongue contradict each other, believe the eye.
* * *
There is an indifference that attracts, and there is an indifference that repels. He is a sagacious man, and she is a sagacious woman, who will differentiate them. The question resolves itself into that which so often puzzles the angler,—how much line to let out. About one thing there need be no hesitation,
When your fish is within reach, be quick with the landing-net—or even with the gaff.
* * *
In the matter of wooing, soon enough does the young girl learn to prefer the mature manners of the man of the world to the gaucheries of inexperienced youth. As to the man!
How curious the things that appeal to this lord of creation, Man!—a half-averted face—a laughing gesture—a merry eye—an all but imperceptible tone of the voice—the scarce felt touch of a reluctant hand—a semi-tender phrase—an unexpected glance—the momentary pressure of petulant lips—a blanched cheek—a look prolonged one fractional part of a second beyond its wont—an infinitesimal drooping of the eyelid—a speaking silence—a half-caught sigh—these will entrap the male brute where green widths that were never dried will not hold him. But
By what men are won, most women seem thoroughly to comprehend.
By what women are won, few men know. Perhaps
No woman knows by what she herself is won.
One thing there is, at all events, to which woman will always succumb: tenderness. But remember, Dames, that
Tenderness is extremely difficult of simulation. Or rather,
Tenderness is so delicate and deep-seated a feeling, that few care to attempt its simulation.
* * *
A woman who gives herself too freely is apt to regret the giving. In time, too, she discovers that, as a matter of fact,
No woman can give her real self twice: one or other gift will prove to be a loan. (And
It is always and only the first recipient that causes a woman's heart to flutter, and often it flutters long.) 144
A second gift is generally a mortgage—if it is not a sale.
A mortgage is difficult to bind. For